New Iraqi Governing Council Meets for First Time
By Patrick E. Tyler

July 13, 2003 – (NYTimes) After tense negotiations that went late into the night on Friday, a group of Iraqi political parties and former exiles reached agreement on a list of 25 Iraqis who are to declare the country's first postwar government at a ceremony on Sunday, Iraqi political figures said.

[The Associated Press reported on Sunday that security was tight at the Baghdad convention center, near where the council meeting was taking place. Fighter jets flew over the city, and helicopters circled the area. Bomb-sniffing dogs were on hand at the convention center, and scores of heavily armed U.S. soldiers kept watch.

The Associated Press also reported that in its first act, the Iraqi governing council announced April 9, date of Saddam Hussein's fall, as a new national holiday.]
Aides to L. Paul Bremer III, the American occupation administrator here, met with members of the former Iraqi opposition and prospective members of the new government and agreed in private talks today on two documents that define the "authorities" and the "responsibilities" of a new governing council that will assume extensive executive powers under the American-British occupation, the Iraqis said.

"The governing council will exercise specific powers immediately," one of the documents says, "in addition to representing the interests of the Iraqi people to the Coalition Provisional Authority and the international community during Iraq's transition to a sovereign, democratic and representative government."

The interim government is to include the leaders of the main Kurdish factions, Massoud Barzani and Jalal Talabani, prominent exiles like Ahmad Chalabi and Iyad Alawi, and leaders from Shiite parties like the Daawa and the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq.

Aside from seven leaders of the former Iraqi opposition, the government roster was filled out by 18 Iraqis selected by a process of negotiation between Mr. Bremer's office and the main opposition groups.

Of the 25 people on the list, 13 are Shiite Muslims, a crucial concession to the religious group that makes up 60 percent of Iraq's roughly 24 million people. Five are Kurds and five are Sunni Muslims, and there is one Assyrian Christian and a Turkoman, a woman. But, significantly, the new interim government will be dominated by the Iraqi exile leaders and Kurdish chieftains who carried out the long campaign to remove Saddam Hussein from power.

The documents and list of participants in the governing council were provided to The New York Times by Iraqis who took part in the meetings.

More than half of the 25 names are of exiles and Kurdish leaders, and more than half the new government took part in the formative meetings of the Iraqi National Congress, the umbrella opposition movement that met in Salahuddin in northern Iraq in 1992. The congress has since split into a number of groups.

The behind-the-scenes drama described by one Iraqi political figure included a late-night demand by the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, the Shiite religious party, that three names be removed from the government roster. One of these three, Farqad Qazwini, a Shiite cleric from Hilla, was accused of having been an informer for Mr. Hussein's secret police. A file discovered in Mr. Hussein's intelligence directorate apparently confirmed that Mr. Qazwini had significant intelligence connections, Iraqis familiar with the discussions said.

Mr. Bremer's office would not comment on this account. Mr. Qazwini could not be reached for comment, but his name, and those of two others, were stricken from the list late Friday night, Iraqi political figures said.

Ryan Crocker, a senior political aide to Mr. Bremer, was said to have telephoned the Supreme Council representative and asked, "If we strike these three names from the list, are you in or are you out?" The Supreme Council official was said to have replied, "We are in." Thus ended the negotiations. Also stricken from the list, Iraqis said, was Lena Aboud, a 28-year-old physician. In her place was added Hamid Majid Musa, the leader of the Iraqi Communist Party.

A meeting today between Mr. Bremer's aides and many of the prospective government leaders centered on the ceremony being planned for Sunday, in which the 25 Iraqis would meet alone in their new headquarters, a refurbished ministry building, and emerge to declare that they had formed a governing council, Iraqi
political figures said.

They discussed every detail of their first day in office, including the backdrop for their news conference — the colors of the Iraqi flag, but not the flag itself because it bears Mr. Hussein's handwritten war cry, "God is great!"

While the final shape of the governing council represents a victory of sorts for the former Iraqi opposition groups that worked with the United States and Britain to topple Mr. Hussein, a formidable task now awaits the body once it takes office.

The interim government will be desperately short of financial resources with which to carry out a reconstruction program, as Iraqi crude oil sales, even under the most optimistic scenarios, fall far short of meeting the funding requirements to finance the new state, a number of experts have said.

It will also take office at a time when the Bush administration and the government of Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain are becoming increasingly concerned about flagging public support for the allied occupation here in the face of daily attacks on their forces, a campaign of sabotage and a mounting death toll from guerrilla-style assaults following the end of major hostilities.

Early today, military police officers securing a prison complex west of Baghdad came under attack, but there were no reports of casualties. Farther west, in Falluja, an Army patrol came under fire during a patrol on the outskirts of the city, military officials said.

The powers of the Iraqi governing body were spelled out in writing at the insistence of Iraqi political groups and stipulate that the 25-member council will "name an interim minister for each ministry" and that the council will oversee the work of the ministers and "shall have the authority to dismiss ministers should they lose the council's confidence." The body would also have the power to draft and approve a budget for 2004 and amend the current 2003 emergency budget drafted by Mr. Bremer's occupation authority.

The governing body will appoint chargés d'affaires, not ambassadors, to foreign capitals and "shall have the right to prepare policies on matters concerning Iraq's national security, including the rebuilding" of Iraq's "armed forces and justice sector." The documents also vest authority in the governing council to decide how a new Iraqi constitution would be drafted and approved by the Iraqi people.

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